Damn

            Oh, God, I hate doctors’ offices.  Why must everything be so white? Do they pretend that everything that goes on in here is all hunky-dorey, when it so obviously isn’t?  Not a person comes in that doesn’t have something wrong with them; even the hypochondriacs are afflicted in their own little way.  These walls taunt me.  The pristine-ness of the office and the coldness of their metal instruments mock me at every turn, I hate them all!  How can these things be so clean, so right, when they are in constant contact with the flawed, defective instances of humanity? How?!

            The doc drew some blood a few minutes ago, and just left me here to contemplate what might be wrong with me.  Oh, God, what is wrong with me? Why won’t they just tell me, is it so hard?  I promise, I can take bad news. It’s the waiting with the whiteness that I cannot stand!  He has my life in his hands, and I’m sitting here in this degrading front-robe thing, dangling my feet off of the little half-bed they have everyone sit on.  I can’t help but notice that the butcher at the grocery store I go to every once in a while uses this same kind of paper to wrap my ground chuck.   How’s that for irony?  How many people wind up going into that ground chuck I buy?  Why did I sign up for this?

            As I sat there, pondering my fate, the doctor came back into the room.  As I expected, he was holding a few pieces of paper, probably with the results of my blood work.  I didn’t say anything, but tried to read his facial expression.  He had that blank-yet-somehow-pleasant face that I always seem to see doctors wearing.  “Can’t I just have the results, doc? What’s the word?” I pleaded with him, unable to restrain the tremble in my voice.

            The doctor glanced at the papers, took a breathe, smiled, and said “Well, it isn’t as bad as we thought.  You won’t need a transplant, after all.  Just some vicodin for a week or two, and you should be fine.”

            “Oh, thank you!”